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Friday, October 30, 2015

Both night- time cameras continue to run---a total of more than 1.6 million images over the past 3 years and not a single light that can't be explained with logic and critical thinking! That pretty much sums up our entire research effort to date.

My book manuscript is at the publisher and hopefully will be out by the end of the year.

Alex and I have given several short slide presentations over the past few weeks to civic groups and the Blue Ridge Parkway' Mineral Musuem.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Not much of note happening lately with our BMLs research. The two nightly cameras continue running but no unexplained lights have appeared lately. My book preparation continues but has been delayed by my busy schedule and a computer crash in March---no data was lost as everything was backed up on external drives! I'm now learning Windows 8.1 on a new computer. A publisher has been selected and hopefully the book will be out before the end of the year. I'm now working with the publisher on formatting the numerous images for the book.

Monday, March 2, 2015

The recent cold weather has added a new naturally-occurring light on Brown Mountain!

Snow on the bare rock outcrop that I call Lael's Rock reflects moonlight and creates a bright spot of light on the west side of the mountain. The image below shows the reflected moonlight from the Waxing Gibbous Moon (57%) about 4 hours before Moon set. The previous two weeks of zero or below nightly temperatures probably turned the small stream of water that flows onto Lael's Rock into ice, which was then covered by reflective pure white snow. This patch of snow-covered ice had not yet melted like the snow on the rest of the mountain---leaving an obvious bright white spot on the side of the mountain. Similar snow-covered rock outcrops can also be seen in the foreground of the image.

The Brown Mountain Lights Research Team's BML Cam1 sits atop a house on Jonas Ridge and overlooks Brown Mountain 7 miles to the east. It has been running intermittently since February 2013 and has recorded over 4,000 hours of night-time images.

Who could mistake this light as 'mysterious'? Probably not many people would be fooled, but with the number of people we've seen so far who are unsure of what they see, anything is possible.

Dr. Dan Caton, Professor and Director of Observatories, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Appalachian State University (Boone, NC) installed and operates the camera as part of an on-going research project. Dr. Caton also installed and operates another research camera (BML Cam2) located at the southern end of Linville Gorge. The images from both cameras are compiled into nightly videos and posted on YouTube---just search "Brown Mountain Lights Camera 1" (or Camera 2) for the individual nightly videos. Both cameras are modified digital meteor-hunting cameras with low-light sensitive CCD sensors.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

The Brown Mountain Lights Research Team's BML Cam1 sits
atop a house on Jonas Ridge and overlooks Brown Mountain 7 miles to the east.
It has been running intermittedntly since February 2013 and has recorded over 4,000 hours of night-time images.

Dr. Dan Caton, Professor and
Director of Observatories, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Appalachian State
University (Boone, NC) installed and operates the camera as part of an on-going
research project. Dr. Caton also installed and operates another research camera
(BML Cam2) located at the southern end of Linville Gorge. The images from both
cameras are compiled into nightly videos and posted on YouTube---just search
"Brown Mountain Lights Camera 1" (or Camera 2) for the individual nightly
videos. Both cameras are modified digital meteor-hunting cameras with low-light sensitive CCD sensors.

To
date, numerous lights have been recorded by Cam1, including: town/city/rural
lights in the valleys beyond Brown Mountain, fireworks, communication tower
lights, airplanes and helicopters, highway-vehicle lights, off-highway-vehicle
lights, stadium lights, back-country user lights, and brush/forest fires.
Natural lights captured by the camera include stars, Jupiter, Mars, Venus,
Mercury, the Moon, meteors, lightning and fireflies. Disappointingly, Cam1 has
yet to record any support for mysterious or unknown lights in the Brown Mountain
area.

BML Cam1 recorded 336 hours of nocturnal observation
time on 29 seperate nights during December 2014, resulting in 38,569 individual
30-second time-exposure images. This brings the totals over the past 23 months
since start up in Feb 2013 to 4,002 hours of nocturnal observation time on 440
seperate nights resulting in 437,273 individual time-exposure images. Each of
these images has been examined in detail by members of our research
team.

No abnormal, unusual or unexplained nocturnal lights were recorded
by BML Cam1 during December 2014. However, the usual distant city/town/rural
lights, airplane lights, and Lenoir's Christmas Star atop Hibriten Mtn
were visible this month. In addition staged hiker lights atop Brown Mountain were visible on Dec 11, while a probable hunter's camp was visible on Dec 4, MedEvac helicopters were visible on Dec 13 & 18, and probable ATV lights were visible on Dec 31. During the staged hiker light test on Dec 11, an airplane was seen flying very low over Brown Mountain and it's lights were captured by BML Cam1.

The following images are selected to show some significant
features visible during December 2014. Note that the camera position does not
change during this sequence of images. Blurry or out-of-focus distant lights
are caused by: 1) over-saturation of the super-sensitive CCD sensor; 2) movemnt of the lights; &/or 3) rising heat currents that distort
the incoming light waves during the time exposures. Bright lights with light rays extending above & below are also due to the CCD sensor.

Friday, January 2, 2015

The following image shows the lights of two seperate ATVs on Trail #2 atop Brown Mountain between 8:31 pm and 9:02 pm on December 31, 2014. The ATVs traveled southward (left-to-right) on the rugged one-way trail and stayed fairly close together during the trip.

Two ATVs traveling together on Trail # 2 atop Brown Mountain

The convoluted trace of Trail # 2 is apparent from the line of lights. Only about 1 mile of Trail # 2 is visible within the field of view of this photo. Compare this image with earlier posts of similar ATV lights visible along the trail on Aug 16, 2014 & my handheld spotlight as I hiked the trail on Dec 11, 2014.

ATV Trail # 2 is part of the US Forest Service's Brown Mountain Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Area (34 miles of maintained ATV trails atop Brown Mountain). The Recreation Area is open to ATVs from mid-March until Jan 1 each year; thus these were perhaps the last ATVs on the mountian until spring time. This was not a staged light test and the riders are unknown.

Our BML research team has conducted numerous light tests on Brown Mountain over the past two years and has established that back-country user lights are readily visible at night. Lights such as these are probably frequently misinterpreted as mystery lights by uninformed and unprepared observers viewing from the popular observation sites like the NC Hwy 181 Overlook and Wiseman's View.